In Dreams He Came
by stefanie bean
Summary: A young man can't help his dreams. Raoul and Phantom slash. Sexy, thus the M rating.


**In Dreams He Came**

Night rustles on the curtains like a woman waving her handkerchief good-bye. Raoul looks out the tall mullioned window to the street, as if for the hundredth time. The streetlight hasn't moved, and in this respectable neighborhood no scarlet-clad tart would pose beneath it. The police see to that.

He sighs and closes the heavy velvet drapes. Some white roses droop in the crystal vase on the side table. _Can't Christine get the maids to replace the flowers daily?_ he thinks irritably, running his finger idly along the table. _No dust, at least._

The staircase beckons to silent bedrooms upstairs full of breath, full of sleeping people. _All my responsibility_. _My household_. The whole weight of the slumbering second story suddenly presses on him, and instead of going up to bed, he slumps over to the sideboard and pours himself a snifter of brandy.

Since Christine and the servants have gone upstairs, he has already removed his jacket, vest, and suspenders. Now he pulls off his boots and slides them under the ottoman. The brandy goes down in three gulps, and he pours himself another, larger this time.

Stretched out in the wide leather wing-backed chair, feet pointed toward the fire, he rubs his belly thoughtfully. _Not out of the Navy two years,_ he reflects, _and I'm already getting soft_. _Not that it matters to her. It's not my body she thinks of when she lies unmoving under me,_ and his sight turns towards the dusky staircase. The tender belly flesh curls under his hand, pleased at the contact.

It has been a long time since Raoul has been touched.

_Stop that, what are you doing? _he tells himself, and takes another drink, sighing heavily. The golden firelight plays over him like a warm orange bath, making him uncomfortable.

_Too much brandy in the evenings. I have to cut back. Christine used to play draughts with me, or even chess, or we would talk. But now it's all changed. At least a little brandy before bed keeps away the dreams._

The dreams. His hand falls onto his belly again, only a thin layer of linen between him and the warm skin beneath. His skin curls with pleasure as he continues to caress, then his hand softly wanders down to where hip and thigh meet. Slowly he sinks under the fire's warmth, drifting away.

Black and gold, gold and black, and a man with gold shining on his reddish skin, gold light forming a halo around his wild, ragged hair, shoulders sharp in the shadows...

Raoul jumps up with a start as a stir between his legs half-wakes him, just a slight lengthening, a thickening.

_It's the fire. I can't look at firelight or a thickly-laden candelabra without feeling it. That light on my skin. A smell on my skin, a taste on my mouth. The residue of Christine's kiss was sharp and alkaline and rank. My God, I'll never be free of it. I said it once, he will haunt us till we're dead, and it's true._

Draining the glass, he sets it on the sideboard and trudges heavily up the stairs.

The thickening between his legs doesn't go away, and so he tries Christine's door, experimentally. It's locked as it has been every night since Luc-Pierre's birth. The nursery door is right next to it, and he pushes on that one. It swings open silently, the hinges smooth and oiled.

There's a door between the nursery and Christine's room. Sometimes she keeps it open. _She can't keep me out forever, it's not decent_, he argues with himself bitterly. _I know she's afraid of another baby. But it's been almost seven months. Aren't women designed to bear children, anyway? The doctor said that the next ones would probably go easier. She must concede that I am her husband, that I have rights._

A low snore distracts him. In the narrow bed, the night nurse shifts her heavy hips, and in the cot next to her Luc-Pierre sleeps in perfect silence. Flashing with irritation, Raoul covers the baby's exposed legs.

He tries the door. Locked. A wave of sadness and self-pity washes over him, and he looks over at the sleeping woman's plump shoulders rising and falling with her breath. Shaking his head, he tiptoes out and goes into his room.

Under the goose down comforter he's caressed and cosseted. The thick cover warms itself up with the heat of his body and reflects it back. His almost-quiet sex stirs again, then throbs and pushes forth thick and full, and he closes his eyes, quietly desperate.

_I'm twenty-four years old, not some dried-up old man. My wife locks herself in her bedroom, and no end of that in sight. My head is spinning from all that brandy, and this rogue flesh between my legs won't leave me alone. And then there are the dreams_...

They started a few months after Luc-Pierre's birth, and every one was different, yet they all grew like shoots from the same thick trunk. Raoul was deep underground, wet, but not cold, and bathed in a syrupy golden light that rubbed him all over, like hands. The man was there, his shirt open to his belly, his face all red and twisted on one side, and beautiful as a marble statue on the other. A light, mocking smile flickered on his lips.

Shameful delights followed, half-remembered, impossible to forget.

Raoul tries to push the residue of dreams aside. _What did Brother Martin say in catechism class? Hands outside the covers. Don't eat or drink before you go to bed. Take a cold bath. Keep up vigorous exercise. _He feels the little rolls on his sides. _Wrong on every count, there._

Touch me, his stiff, hot flesh says from under the nightshirt. It's been so long. Aren't you full to bursting? Some men take the maid, and a few even take the stable boy. That's not for you, you're a man of honor. All you have to do is slide your hands down over me, and in a few minutes you'll sleep like your baby in the next room, deeply and without dreams.

He curses, and a tear or two stings the corner of his eye. _I can fight this. Sooner or later I'll sleep, I always do_, and already his limbs loosen under the cover that presses down like a body laying on his.

_Think of something else, like the trip you're to make next week to collect Father's rents. You'll have to hire a few strong men to go with you, as some of the tenants don't want to pay, or can't. Think of how snarled Father's accounting books have become in the past year, and how you'll have to go over them with a magnifying glass, to straighten them all out._

Gradually his sex softens, but not entirely, not yet wanting to give up the struggle. Finally, subdued by the down and the brandy he sleeps, and dreams.

Candles, so many candles, their substance melting down like wax, the other man's twisted rugged face looks like flowing wax, too, flowing from a brown candle, and Raoul sees that melting face in his sleep. Deep in dream Raoul stirs. His thick erect flesh burrows into a fold of the covers, snuggling like a mole into the dark embrace of the earth, free of his watchful eye, free to dream.

Raoul's tied up to the portcullis, but the water isn't cold. Instead it's like a bath, not hot as when you first get in, but warm as if the water has cooled for awhile, so that it laps warmly about you without burning. The water rubs him like that, right at the level of his hips, just a little warmer than blood.

From across the lake the man swaggers towards him, and that curved wicked smile lights up his face. His hips pivot like pistons, oiled and smooth, while his thighs are like bands of iron. The man looks Raoul up and down as if he's a rabbit caught in a trap. The water swirls around his legs as the man moves towards him, and Raoul pulses with anticipation. He's hotly aware that neither of them wear any trousers.

_There was a kiss, long ago, two kisses, really. Christine had them then, why shouldn't I now? _The man looms over Raoul, taller by half a head. He puts his hands around Raoul's neck lightly, experimentally, and then runs his hands down over the whole length of Raoul's body, rubbing his thighs. Upwards travel the caressing hands and meet at Raoul's own.

The man unties the ropes gently and caresses Raoul's wrists, and Raoul doesn't fight. He only aches with fierce anticipation. Then the man's curved mouth curls into an imp of a smile and descends to Raoul's like a hawk, the beaked grin of a bird of prey.

As so often happens in dreams, Raoul feels as if he's in two places at once. He's tied to the portcullis, watching Christine roll her mouth all over the man's. He's also in the middle of the lake standing inside her skin. Christine reached up to that predatory mouth, and so does Raoul. But this time, he's not just watching.

The man pulls Raoul up onto his face, crushes him to his wet, thick chest, and sucks on his mouth in wide wild circles. Raoul buckles under the assault of the kiss, a pigeon smashed in midair by the diving hawk.

_He wants my tongue,_ Raoul knows, and so he gives it to him. Raoul has hardly ever had a tongue in his mouth in his life, not even after months of married love. Christine dispenses only dry perfumed kisses that smell of rosewater or mint, proper kisses one would expect of a decent wife.

However, Raoul hungers for the wet slithery struggle of mouth on mouth. So when the man thrusts his own ravishing muscle between Raoul's lips, Raoul opens wide, giving up his tongue, the entire cavity of his mouth in return. And never has his tongue been sucked so desperately, practically pulled out by the roots. Conquered, he groans with deep pleasure.

Wetness runs down his cheek to his chin, and smell-memory floods him. The man's musk on Christine seemed foul and rank to him then, but now it tastes delicious, and he can't get enough. Raoul sucks the taste out of the other, pulling on his tongue as if it was a sweet and he a child trying to get to the soft delicious core inside.

Over the man's body Raoul's hands go, and the man's body's like iron, stiff with muscle under skin like buttery tanned leather. Even his backside is hard. The man grips Raoul's buttocks and kneads them like bread dough. Suddenly Raoul sags soft and pliable under his touch, soft all over, except where hard throbbing intensity overtakes him entirely.

They're both slick with sweat and water as they slide against each other, dueling now not with swords of steel but of flesh.

Raoul can't tell whose low moans are whose. He breaks off the kiss and sees the man's face racked with beauty, his mouth open into a round ring of pleasure, his eyes shut and rolled back in his head. A wave of wild happiness washes over Raoul, and another, until the delightful agony fills the cup of his body, and then overflows ...

Raoul opens his eyes, washed onto the shore of waking by an unstoppable sweet wave. As the first few scalding drops leave him, he wraps his fingers around himself and thrusts, powerfully and without thought. Hips plunging, out of him pours the long arc of pleasure's white blood.

A tender glow bathes him along with the few remaining drops, softening the shame, the embarrassment, the hot jealousy.

His other hand grasps nothing, only air. A soft golden image made of wind and flame fades into the rustle of the night, and disappears into the cold congealing dawn.

A few moments later, Raoul sleeps without dreams.

(_Finis_)


End file.
